Cricket: Ember's Story

Ten months ago

Ten months ago

Adam is the one who found the winter squat. The house is empty, long abandoned by anyone who once called it "home," but you can tell it's been used over the years. Discarded syringes and crack pipes and rat shit litter the floor. Dirty mattresses with their coils exposed sit around like old skeletons in three of the bedrooms. Its emptiness makes it almost pretty. Adam is great at finding these sorts of places.

The house must've been gorgeous back in the day, a real Victorian beauty, before the neighborhood became gang territory. I can't even imagine this block when there were flowerbeds and kids playing in the yards and daily papers thrown onto front porches. Things change. I guess the whole city used to be pretty like that, not just the glittery, made up, contoured and highlighted face of downtown Chicago. That's all the tourists see. Nobody except people like us sees the matted hair on the back of her head.

This is our winter home. Adam and Hex sleep together in the biggest room. Me and Jesse in another. The other rooms are upstairs and unexplored. No one wants to fall through the ceiling or meet a ghost.

Back to Adam. He's a genius compared to the rest of us. Always has a trick up his sleeve to get us through the cold nights when there's no food or, worse, no drugs. He's easy on the eyes too, but he belongs to Hex body and soul. They're both seventeen. Jesse and I are eighteen.

Oh, and then there's Gus. I forget about him. We all do. He's fifteen, the baby of the group, and no one likes sleeping with him because he has nightmares and wets himself, so he was banished to the front room to sleep alone. He worships the ground Adam walks on and follows him around everywhere, clutching this ratty stuffed dog we found in a dumpster one day. That was a compromise because Gus really wanted to take home this sick rat and make it a pet. He always does stupid things like that. Whatever happened to Gus fucked him up bad, trapping him in an eternal childhood. None of us has asked what it was.

This is my family. People come and go, but we are the core. Everyone here has a story about how one of the others saved their life once. That's how it is.

I guess I should mention some things about Jesse. He was a real douchebag to leave me in that bathroom, but don't write him off yet. There's a lot of good in him. I love him. He's the love of my life. We left Michigan together last year. There was nothing keeping us there. My mom kicked me out and Jesse's mom left when he was ten, and he had more of a relationship with the back of his father's hand than the man himself, who was a worthless, cruel drunk.

Being with Jesse is like being on a rollercoaster. He has these insane highs and lows. When he's up, he'll be treating me like a princess, buying me things with money he doesn't have, clinging to me like Gus clings to that stuffed dog. When he's down, he'll scream and beat the shit out of me and threaten to kill me or himself or both of us at the same time. I know he just can't control himself. He tells me that afterwards as he cries and begs for my forgiveness, and I always do forgive him because I know he needs me.

He hates when I leave him alone. That's his biggest fear, being left alone, and after everyone falls asleep, he lets me know it... again.

"I'm just gonna go to the bathroom," I whisper, which means I'll walk out back and find a place in the leaves. His arms tighten around me in our sleeping bag.

"No, don't. I just wanna fall asleep beside you. Just stay 'till I fall asleep."

"You're as bad as Gus, come on," I say, irritated.

And I've done it. I've crossed the line, again. His hand crawls up under my long blond hair and traces my neck.

"You shouldn't have said that," he whispers, low and threatening.

"I'm sorry," I say hurriedly, and I hold my breath, waiting for him to snap and hurt me.

But he doesn't because he needs me tonight.

"I'll stay," I say gently, tracing his jaw, and I feel him relax.

We ran out of condoms days ago, but I'm too scared to turn him down, and we end up fucking without protection. Sex is how we both fix things, even though everything is still broken afterwards.

That was the night this whole mess started. When I found out I was pregnant I had two options, and abortion wasn't one because we had no money. My options were tell Jesse and let him beat the hell out of me until I miscarried, or pretend everything was normal and deal with it later. I chose to deal with it later.

"Later" became a month. I wasn't showing, so might as well carry on. Then another month. My pants still fit. Then another, and I had a slight bump but it was easily hidden. And then more months. I never got that big. It was easy to hide it with baggy shirts and jackets. Hex would ask me all the time what the fuck I was gonna do, and I just kept brushing her off. I had sworn her to secrecy and she was true to her word. She's my best friend after all.

And then that day in the bathroom came. Cricket came. And my options have gone from two to zero.